Forum Discussion
Turning off email notifications for Office 365 Groups
We need to start using "unified groups" in Office 365/Azure AD for an intranet project that uses Azure AD as the identitiy provider. We want communication to stay in the platform, and what we don't want is our 200 odd users receiving personal inbox emails every time an event is created in the O365 Group calendars that they are part of. Or digest style emails of new documents added to the sharepoint doc library.
Basically ZERO notifications in their personal mailbox. Our intranet platform will do enough notifying as it is.
So as far as I can see, in the O365 Admin Center, there is the "Send copy of group conversations and events to group members" setting - which is off by default.
But when a member is added to the group, the group appears in their Outlook automatically and for the group settings there is this "Follow in Inbox" section which is set to "Only replies to you and events" by default.
See the screenshots below. What is the relationship between these two?
Is there a way, using PowerShell or other means, to change the per user setting in Outlook to "No email or events" for all members of existing groups?
Or set it as the default setting for all new members of the specific groups?
Or better still, a way to turn it off at the whole tenancy in one swift action?
Seriously Microsoft, how hard would it be to have a few extra options in the settings of the Group creation wizard such as "disable welcome emails" or "make all email notifications opt-in" so administrators have a little more control over who is being spammed with superfluous emails. </rant>
But seriously, is there a way to set "No email or events" in bulk for users or for new group members?
rpdodds Hello, there are several options to choose from when using the Set-UnifiedGroup cmdlet.
For example.
-UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled
-HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled
-HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled
-AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents
-AutoSubscribeNewMembers
See this for details about the switches
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/exchange/set-unifiedgroup?view=exchange-ps
ChristianBergstrom Thanks!
So if I use:
Set-UnifiedGroup "New O365 Group for Intranet" -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$false -AutoSubscribeNewMembers:$false -HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled:$true -HiddenFromExchangeClientsEnabled -ModerationEnabled:$true -ModeratedBy:poweruser1@domain.com,poweruser2@domain.com,poweruser3@domain.com -SubscriptionEnabled:$false -UnifiedGroupWelcomeMessageEnabled:$falseI'm effectively turning off ALL notification emails to members personal inboxes, hiding it from Outlook/OWA, hiding it from address book/people searches, and setting it so emails to the group or calendar events created in the group have to be approved by powerusers 1, 2 or 3. Is that right?
If I'm going to create 30 odd new groups, should I create the groups first, then run this command and add members last?
Also ChristianBergstrom, I've just noticed that the -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents:$false switch only sets it to "Replies Only" which I assume is the equivalent to "Only replies to you" in my second screenshot. That is disappointing that it's not "No email or events".
Do you know if there's a way to set that?
rpdodds Hello again, just a heads up that the -AutoSubscribeNewMembers switch overrides the -AlwaysSubscribeMembersToCalendarEvents.
As you're working on a 'lockdown' perhaps you should use the -SubscriptionEnabled switch instead.
"The SubscriptionEnabled switch specifies whether subscriptions to conversations and calendar events are enabled for the Microsoft 365 Group."
As for the expected results I'm afraid you have to do your own testing. But now you have the tools you need so enjoy and good luck!
